


Survival and Rebirth

by kat8cha



Category: Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, For the movie (duh) but also for accompanying literature, Gen, Kix shows up in two chapters, Leia and Luke are the center of the first chapter, M/M, Pre-OT3, Spoilers, but the rest is all the new trio, mentions of various resistance members, so he gets mentioned above, your mileage may vary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 23:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6171325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat8cha/pseuds/kat8cha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AKA 5 Things that Survived the Empire and 1 Thing that Didn't (Romance novels, lightsabers, Kix, R2-D2, Yavin and Alderaan).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Senator and her Knight

**Author's Note:**

> There are a ton of things that were destroyed at the end of the Republic and a bunch that survived the death of the Republic and the destruction of the Empire. Similarly, this fic has been through several drafts but is un-beta'd so I apologized for any mistakes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke isn't meditating but he is hiding.

One thing Leia was going to have to get used to, or rather, re-used to, was the awed, semi-reverent way people treated her brother. Luke… well, after the destruction of the first Death Star there had been a bit of a cult following for Luke. Nothing serious, just a few awed murmurs. Revelations he was the last Jedi certainly hadn’t helped matters. Then after the Empire fell, well, the cautious, curious, damn near worshipful way some people treated him had only gotten worse. Leia had dealt with a similar kind of awe for most of her life but no long term member of the Resistance looked at her with starry eyes for too long. Even the new recruits, and stragglers from the Republic military, were learning that General Leia Organa was not to be worshipped.

But Luke was, had always been, another story. He’d never learned how to nip worship in the bud. Never learned to be harsh. And there was something special about that, Leia wouldn’t have him any other way.

She wasn’t surprised that Luke’s return from self-imposed exile (which she had given him an earful about although she could see in every movement he made how much training he had done, could feel the Force in every breath he took, could see his mind as still and calm as a pool) had been quickly followed by frequent isolation and meditation. Leia thought at first it might just been the noise and sheer amount of people (although they hadn’t been half as large a force when Luke and Rey had returned as they were now) but while Luke now would step out of his shell to mingle it was clearly awkward on both ends. She could remember a time when Luke’s smiles came freely and his cheer was infectious, now he seemed so solemn and while it wouldn’t be right to say it dampened spirits… he was never going to be the life of the party. The occasional glimpse of the sweet kid who had joined the Rebellion so many years ago (usually evident in a bad joke) would cause widened eyes and silence conversations.

When Luke left a room now, whispers followed. They followed him around the base, wherever he was coming or going, someone was whispering his name.

It did make quite the trail for her to follow.

“Rumor is,” Leia stepped into a room still filmed with dust, while they gained new fighters, contacts and ships every day the base they had commandeered was roomy enough that not everywhere had been dusted and put to use, “that you’re meditating.”

Luke’s chuckle was nearly as dusty as the floor. She followed the path laid out by his footprints through a short corridor of desks and blank screens. The room he had chosen to hide in must have been a communications room, or perhaps even a proper library, or a study. Besides the desks and screens there were plenty of comfortable, if threadbare, chairs scattered around the room and the walls were lined with shelves half full of illegibly marked boxes. Leia rounded the last of the blank screens to make out Luke ensconced in what her father (Bail, not the other one) would have called a reading nook. Leia had always thought of such places as liabilities, even in her post-war life. While the bare wood of the window seat could hardly be called comfortable and the window was as filmed with dust as the rest of the room, the slanting sunlight would provide a clear view of Luke’s reclined form from the right vantage point. He had cleared a circle on the window, likely with his sleeve, and allowed the sun to hit him full in the face. It would have blinded him to an attack coming from the dark of the room.

“If I meditated half as much as the Republic thought I did,” Luke said with a smile reserved just for her, “I’d be half force ghost already.”

The ‘already’ did not assuage any fears she had. She worried that her brother saw death around every corner. Not in the same way she did, not as something to be feared, but as something to be welcomed with open arms. She worried he was going to do as Obi-wan Kenobi did and open his arms to the attack.

Hopefully not in full view of Rey. Leia didn’t know how Rey would take it.

“Watching your charge then?” 

The dirty window still afforded a decent view of the courtyard. Leia came to stand at Luke’s shoulder, the cleared oval of window space meant she could make out maybe half the faces of the young men and women gathered in the courtyard. Their new base was pure old Republic, a large, sprawling, fancy building with architecture heavily influenced by the culture of the world it was built on. The courtyard was large enough to hold a limmie match in which, if Leia guessed right, was exactly what Pammich was trying to organize. There was a row of short hedges and a small yard past the courtyard and outer defenses that separated the base from the town it was stuck in. Most of the sprawling old bases had been torn down or converted into Stormtrooper barracks some, like this one, had been given to Imperial governors for private use.

“They arrived after I did.” Luke’s tone was only slightly defensive, he was probably telling the truth. Leia smiled slightly as her brother tracked Rey as she was tugged towards the potential teams. She and Finn had fit in well with the Resistance. They were still finding their feet (Finn, quite literally) but they were doing well.

Connix had stolen the ball from Pammich and was now bouncing it between her knees and once off the top of her head. When she saw Rey she grinned, shouted something at the other woman, and kicked the ball. It was high, high enough that Rey could have (maybe) deflected it with a kick if she had been willing to drop Finn’s hand and toss herself into the air. Rey, who Leia doubted had much history with limmie, caught the ball with one hand. It was a good catch but it inspired a chorus of boos that echoed off the courtyard walls. The noise attracted attention from other members of the Resistance who ducked their heads out of squeakily opened windows or through the handful of doors that opened into the courtyard.

Leia was sure she spotted Dameron hanging out of a fifth story window to shout at the players but she really, didn’t want to know.

She shoved Luke’s legs aside and sat with her back to the window. “If you aren’t meditating and you aren’t spying on Rey,” Luke folded his legs underneath and raised his eyebrows at her, she scowled, just a little, “what are you doing?”

Luke lifted his datapad off his folded legs. She hadn’t even noticed it. “Reading.”

Leia narrowed her eyes. He had sounded embarrassed. Just a little embarrassed but… “Reading what?”

Ah, and now he was blushing, just a little, just enough she could see it under his beard. “A romance novel.”

There was a slight whine to his voice now. 

Leia couldn’t quite stop her grin. With the sun slanting through the window and the whine in his voice… well, it didn’t return the gold to his hair or wipe the bear from his face but it softened some of the lines around his eyes and gave his eyes a youthful twinkle. She could almost see her brother returned, instead of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. “Anything I’d know?”

“I doubt it.” Luke tapped the datapad against his knee and the title of the novel hovered inches over it, a scroll of large yellow print. With a wave of his fingers the holo rotated and she could read the title.

“The Senator and her Knight?” Leia couldn’t keep the incredulousness out of her question. It hardly sounded like classical literature. Of course modern romance novels tended towards one word titles or ridiculously poetic references. The Senator and her Knight was straight-forward. He’d said it was old, though, so… “Is it pre-Imperial?”

A romance novel featuring a Jedi Knight?

Luke nodded. “The island I was on,” he ducked his head slightly, “there wasn’t much to do there, I found a bunch of data crystals and, well…” he shrugged. “It’s strange what people saved from the Empire’s purges.”

Leia nodded. She supposed if she was saving things for future generations romance novels wouldn’t be high on her list. But not everyone could be hiding away maps or military data for later generations, someone had to be more worried about their library. “Of all the things to survive the fall of the Republic.” She shook her head.

Luke’s laughter was quiet and quick, his smile was soft. “I can think of worse things.”

She could too.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. “Well, what are you waiting for Master Skywalker? Read it to me.”

A moment of silence followed by the tap of Luke’s fingers on the holopad. “Senator Kizzme was not having a good day a meeting with Jedi Knight Ramekin was the last thing she needed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If society collapsed tomorrow I AM POSITIVE ROMANCE NOVELS WOULD LIVE ON. Some hardcore fan would bury a shrink wrapped copy of The Notebook in their backyard.
> 
> Kizzme Ralla and Ramekin Cloudlover are in no way based on Padme and Anakin. I have in no way envisioned a series of romance novels written by a bored senatorial aide which are actually RPF. There was never a hard-core fandom.
> 
> This chapter was written first but is lighter in tone than some of the others and is actually set, timeline wise, post chapter 2.


	2. Hidden Depths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey battles Luke, Luke battles his fears. They discuss lightsabers, the past, and the future.

The sea roared around Skywalker’s isolated little island. It battered at the cliffs and swamped the small rocky beaches. The waves were sometimes high enough that Rey could see spray from the training yard. She checked on the Falcon religiously (it was where she slept, after all) to make sure the salt in the air hadn’t damaged anything. R2 would whir and chirp at her every evening, asking after Skywalker and when he was going to come say hello.

Yesterday Skywalker had stood at the top of the makeshift stairs that Rey used to climb down to the Falcon. So, closer to going home.

They trained in silence most of the time. Skywalker seemed to prefer it. His voice was quiet and rough, more like sand than the ocean. Rey preferred the quiet as well, she has spent so much of her life isolated that she’s used to it. Far more used to quiet than she was to the constant noise of the Resistance.

Sometimes, though, something pushed her to speak.

“He said it was his.” 

She hasn’t brought this up before. She’s talked to Skywalker about her interactions with Kylo Ren, very little of what she said had surprised him, but this… she hadn’t talked about this.

The lightsaber in Rey’s hands hummed quietly, she could feel the sound in her bones, in her teeth. Its color made her skin glow. It made her feel like the angels of Iego, luminous and powerful. Luke’s lightsaber is green and when he holds it to defend it gave his face a sickly pallor. She meant to ask whether the colors had meaning, she has meant to ask for a while. There have been so many questions, however, that needed answering. 

“Ben’s obsession with his grandfather has always been misguided.” Skywalker’s lightsaber clashed with hers, a flight of sparks, a hiss, she felt herself pushed back, defensive again.

Their first duel, days after Rey had appeared on his hiding spot, he had worked her slowly, carefully. She had thought he was taking it easy on her, or testing her(he had definitely been testing her) and she struck out, sped up the pace, attacked. He had been quick to step back and turn his lightsaber off. She had been forced to do the same. The next day she had followed his pace, worried that perhaps _slow_ was the only pace the old man could go. She figured she would at least learn the proper way to handle a lightsaber, if nothing more interesting than that.

He had built up a punishing pace by the time their duel had ended. Both of them had been drenched in sweat and short of breath, Rey had earned a few light burns (her own fault, he had saved her from cutting off her own hand with a wave of the Force) and hadn’t underestimated him again.

“I thought his obsession was with Vader.” 

Her statement caused Skywalker to pause but the opening provided, which she took, wasn’t really good enough. She stepped right past him in her swing and overbalanced (again). Her lightsaber (not hers) stabbed at the grass and she skidded to her knees.

Skywalker sighed.

“Vader and my father are one and the same.” He shut his own lightsaber off and helped her to her feet. Not that she needed his help.

She wondered how many people knew that Vader was Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa’s father. She had heard of the two of them, after all, from scavenged data cores and crackling holos. She had heard of Vader as well, although mostly in the stories that the children on Jakku would whisper to each other when they could not sleep. Bobbajo the storyteller had told them stories of the Empire before it’s fall, terrible stories made light and fun by the fact that Bobbajo and his animals were always the heroes. Vader was in some of them, the Rebel Alliance in others. 

“That…” she paused, took a breath, released it. “Okay.” 

He was staring at her intensely. He did that. She wasn’t sure if Skywalker had any other mode than ‘intense’ or if it had been drummed out of him by the beat of the waves. The back of her shirt is stuck to her with sweat and the mid-afternoon sun is a pleasant warmth on her shoulders. It almost took the chill out of the air. 

“Not many people know that.” He said, his hand still on her elbow, it was warm, as warm as the sun, and calloused with wear and age. “Leia and I haven’t made a secret of it but…” He shrugged and the folds of his robes flapped in the wind. “It’s a difficult topic to bring up.”

Rey breathed in air flavored with salt and sea. “I can understand that.” If her family… well, if she could remember who her family was and they were horrible people she wouldn’t want to talk about them much. She didn’t want to talk about the fact she had no family either. It was a surprisingly easy topic to avoid. 

Skywalker turned from her to stare out at the sea. She’d had a lot of time to study him (she wasn’t really good at meditating) and she knew he did that a lot. The sea seemed to calm him, or distract him, or call to him. She wasn’t sure which. “You’ll have to,” his gaze went from the seat to the hilt in her hands, he licked his lips, “you may want…” He drifted off again.

She waited. She would have thought that she was done waiting, once she got off Jakku everything had moved so fast but Jedi training seemed to need a lot of patience. 

“When I faced Vader, the first time, I did it with my father’s blade.” He motioned at the hilt in her hands and turned to face her. As on the first day she held it out to him but this time he took it. His touch was close to reverent as he turned the hilt this way and that but his expression was rueful. “I held my own well enough but the relationship between a Jedi and their weapon is… difficult to describe.”

“It’s a part of you.” Rey spoke up. Skywalker looked up quickly, surprised. “Just like any weapon.” She didn’t mean to sound dismissive and the way Skywalker responded (a narrowing of the eyes, a tightness of the lips) made her shake her head. “It, I mean, I know a lightsaber isn’t quite like any of the other weapons out there but… but the principal is the same. I was taught,” and she remembered the grizzled dark skinned twi’lek who had adjusted Rey’s grip on the staff and gruffly told her how to survive, the rest she learned on her own, “that your weapon is an extension of… of you.”

Skywalker nodded. “It is but as you said, a lightsaber is more than that. The Force is everywhere, in everything, the Jedi both sense and affect it. As they are the Force’s conduit a lightsaber is a Jedi’s.” 

He sighed then, an echo of the crash of waves. The sun dipped behind a cloud and shadow fell across the island. “Ben has built his own lightsaber and while you did well against him with my father’s,” Skywalker held the hilt out towards her, “you will want to build your own before your next encounter. It will… help.”

Rey took the weapon back and turned the metal over in her hands. The hilt was warm to the touch, scratched with use. There were worn parts to the handle from being gripped too hard too often. It felt right in her hands but… how would her own lightsaber feel? She had never had anything that was just hers. Everything she had ever owned had been someone else’s first. 

“Plus,” his lips were quirked, that little almost-there smile that she had seen him wear increasingly more often the longer she knew him, “you still fight like you’re armed with a staff.”

She flushed and turned away from him, ostensibly to hook the lightsaber back onto her belt. “…wait,” she turned around, eyes widened with surprise, “how would I make a lightsaber into a staff? It’s all…”

She waved her hands in the air, hopefully illustrating that lightsabers were death swords made of plasma and that staffs were solid objects that could be used both as a weapon and to help you push through a sandstorm. 

Skywalker’s amused smile was still in place. “Believe it or not, lightsabers can come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and forms. Han once…” he drifted off, “he helped find a number of lightstabers for the students to study. There was a double bladed one, a sith weapon but…” He shook his head, to clear out the cobwebs or to express disbelief, “if what I’ve learned is true the sith were a little more inventive with their weaponry.”

She thought of Kylo Ren and his cross-guard. Neither Skywalker’s weapon had a hilt of any kind. Then again, Kylo Ren’s lightsaber had hissed and spit like fat over a fire instead of a calming hum. “So, I could, theoretically, make a staff.” She bit her lip and thought about the logistics. It would be difficult. A double bladed lightsaber would need a good sturdy central component. It still wouldn’t be weighted like a staff and she would need to be careful about it but… “Can I take this one apart? To,” she hurried to explain herself in case Skywalker got angry, “to learn.”

He wasn’t angry at all. “Go ahead. Maybe you’ll have an easier time building yours than I did mine.” He turned towards the hut he had claimed as a home. “You’ll need to figure out what kind of crystals you want,” he kept talking as he walked so Rey followed him instead of heading towards the Falcon as she normally would, “there are a number that work in a lightsaber and a number that don’t. It all depends on how they feel to you.” He paused in the doorway of his hut and looked back at her. “You can also make your own but if you want that we’ll need to get the equipment after we return to the Republic.” 

Rey smiled. “So, we are going back.”

“Not right now.” He was quick to say, then he looked over her shoulder at the ocean, always at the ocean, it was frustrating. “But… soon.”

Soon.

She grinned as Luke ducked behind the flap of fabric that was his doorway. Soon. Back to the Republic, the Resistance, adventure and… _Finn_.

She hoped he was awake now. She had so much to tell him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WAS I CLEAR ENOUGH ABOUT THIS BEING SET ON AN ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROARING SEA?!
> 
> I WORRY SOMETIMES ABOUT CLARITY.
> 
> Also, I forgot when writing this bit that Luke wandered off to find the First Jedi Temple and that's where he is at the end of the film. WELL. He found what he was looking for there. Romance novels and peace, I guess.
> 
> Set prior to chapter 1.
> 
> Also, Rey really likes Finn.


	3. Brothers in Arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn isn't trained for this. Well, no, he is trained for this. He's trained for a lot of things. He's pretty sure he hasn't trained for meeting clone soldiers aboard pirate ships, though.
> 
> But he's good at improvising.

The thing was; Finn didn’t want to fight. He wasn’t sure when that happened or if he had never wanted to fight and he had just always expected to. He wanted to fight _for_ things, he wasn’t going to surrender when he could defend himself, he was okay with it if it was self-defense or clearly needed to be done but… well, he’d run from the First Order for a reason. And, okay, that reason had been that he had felt uncomfortable about shooting civilians and he didn’t want to be killed for it but still, there it was, he didn’t want to fight. 

But he wanted to fight for the Resistance, the Republic, the… the whatever. For his friends. He wanted to fight _for_ them but he didn’t want to _fight_. He wanted to protect Rey and Poe and BB-8 and Chewbacca and Maz Kanata and the General and all of the people he had met who had welcomed him with open minds (and sometimes open arms). Thankfully, most of these people could take care of themselves (all of them, really). 

The General had folded one of her hands over his when he had stuttered through his third attempt to get all of this out. He’d just felt he needed to explain, especially to a superior officer, why he flinched (just a little!) when discussions of the future came up. 

“Finn.” And she had such kind eyes, such a warm voice, it was hard to reconcile the General with the woman he had been instructed to hate. “You know, you don’t have to fight for us.” 

He had nodded at that, several times honestly, before he looked her in her the eye. “I want to help, though, and I will fight if I need to. I just don’t want to be a soldier.”

A stormtrooper was nothing but a stormtrooper, was nothing but a soldier, but Finn was so much more than that. He was Finn. He was a person. He could be whatever he wanted. And while he no longer wanted to run for the galactic rim to hide his head in the sand, and while he would glory in his ability to pull off surprising feats as a gunner or on the range or during a spar he didn’t want to have to face down former squadmates on the battlefield.

Not that he wouldn’t. He would. He would die defending his new home (and if he thought about where the First Order had failed it would be there, that, the Officers thought of their ships as home but troopers were taught that nothing was ever theirs, that they were the Order’s but not vice-versa).

“Poe told me there were lots of things I could do to help.” Poe had told Finn a lot of things. It was a lot to get used to, the Republic, and there was a lot he needed to learn. Like how wounds that the First Order would have abandoned you for would be treated (slowly) by the Republic. How wounds that the First Order would have treated with a new spine (as long as the soldier was worth the price) were treated with bacta and painful physical therapy. Like the way Finn was expected to make decisions constantly, about everything. About his therapy, his treatment, his clothing, his meals, when to sleep. Being a soldier would have given Finn a little more stability but as much as the choices made his stomach churn and his gorge rise Finn didn’t want to give them up.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do but he knew that he wanted to choose.

To choose and keep choosing, that’s what Poe (laughingly) said Finn had doomed himself to. It was a doom Finn could look forward to.

“Is there anything you would like to do?” The General had asked and Finn had shrugged at that, still hyper-aware of the warm calloused feel of her hands on his. “Dr. Kalonia said you had some medical training.”

“Can I,” he cleared his throat, “can I try…” He drifted off. He wasn’t sure how to ask for this.

“Would you like to see what your options are?” The General had asked, warm voice laced with amusement, Finn had smiled slightly, helplessly, and nodded. “I’ll tell C-3PO to get you a schedule set up.”

And that was how Finn had found himself bounced around the Resistance like a ball in a game of limmie (a game that he had found was incredibly popular on base and had watched from the windows of the med-bay). Since he was still somewhat recovering (no one listened to him when he said he was perfectly fine, they kept asking him where his pain was between 1 to 10 and kept telling him that he couldn’t score ‘debilitating pain’ as a 4) he worked with the medical personnel first. They tested his knowledge of field medicine (passable) and diseases (abysmal) and he spent most of his time working with them handling surface wounds and making sure people signed their paperwork.

He was grateful for what little training they had been able to give him on top of his First Order training. 

“Hold on, just let me…” the blaster wound was a raw burn skin on Nien Nunb’s arm. His hand shook as Finn smeared the wound with salve and wrapped it with a bandage. The Sullustan held his blaster with his uninjured hand and kept watch over Finn’s shoulder. A trooper injured by a blast would have been left on the field until combat was finished. Medical aid would only have been applied in the trooper carrier on their return trip, if the trooper had survived that long. 

Nien fired a shot over Finn’s shoulder and Finn had just enough time to snag a look to see a First Order trooper go down behind a shattered wall of rock. 

“Thanks.” He said to Nien.

Nien said something, what Finn had no idea. ‘No problem’ or ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘he’d have shot me second’. Sullustan was in Finn’s top five languages to learn first but he hadn’t even gotten started on binary. The First Order had taught their troopers basic and only basic, the Republic expected that everyone have at least bilingual with some knowledge of the various pidgin trader languages.

Finn helped Nien up and then motioned behind him. “I’m going back.”

The Sullustan said something else, shouted it really, but Finn was already moving at a crouch and Nien chose to crouch behind the same shattered stack of bricks and mortar that the First Order trooper had approached from in order to provide cover fire. Finn stepped over crumbled and scorch marked rock and dodged behind still standing pillars. 

He was beginning to dislike Takodana almost as much as he hated Jakku. 

That was it. 

“At least it isn’t Jakku.” He muttered under his breath and it brought a smile to his face as he dodged behind a tree. 

Laughter, spoiled slightly by a cough that sounded wet, greeted him. He stumbled and turned to search for the sound. The tree line was sparse here, the forest just beginning, he could make out the glitter of the lake through the trees. If he looked behind he would see Maz’s castle rise. He spotted the wounded Gabdorin pressed against the hull of a tree, blastar held tight to his side. “Knew I liked you, kid.”

It took Finn a minute as he stared at the roughly dressed pirate. Eventually the peg leg and the fact the Gabdorin recognized him jumpstarted Finn’s memory. “The-” he shouted, loud enough he worried he’d be heard over the echoing blaster fire, “the Meson Martinet.” He crouched low enough to hide in the undergrowth and approached the wounded man. “You were on the crew.”

The Gabdorin coughed and laughed again. “Yeah, yeah I was.” He pressed the hand that didn’t hold his blaster tight against his side. Despite his meaty palm Finn could see scorched and blood stained fabric. This time, when the Gabdorin coughed, blood dripped from his lips. “Names’ Quiggold.”

“Right.” Finn shoved his own blaster onto his back out of the way and reached for the man’s empty hand. When Quiggold raised his blaster to point it at Finn he paused. “Look, I’m a medic. I mean, I’m not, but I have the training and I can…” he motioned at the wound, “I can help.”

“Only help I need’s back at the ship.” The old pirate said with a press of muzzle against Finn’s arm. “We’ve got a medic too.”

Finn looked into the treeline. Rey was in there, he could feel it, but she didn’t need his help right now. Not yet. And Finn had commed Poe the minute the First Order decided to attack, he’d be arriving soon with backup. “I can help you get there.”

He paused. “If you want.”

He wasn’t really sure why he was offering. Sure, it was the right thing to do, but Quiggold hadn’t exactly made himself friendly. But it was the right thing to do and once, once, the Meson Martinet’s crew had offered Finn a berth. 

The Gabdorian looked Finn in the face and let his blaster drop. “I could use a hand.” And once Finn had helped lever the big alien to his feet he grunted. “And someone to watch for more First Order spice suckers.”

Finn bit back a laugh. “The Resistance usually calls them assholes.”

Quiggold grunted. “They’re that too.”

Finn wasn’t surprised at the noise and bustle of the landing pads. None of had signed up to defend Maz’s castle from First Order attacks, or any attacks really. While a portion of Maz’s clientele were loyal to a fault most of them were, well, pirates. Finn could respect the urge to run away rather than stand and fight. Plus, they had almost as much to fear from Republic security forces as they did from he First Order. The Order might shoot them out of the sky (if they could get a lock) but the Republic could seize their cargo, ruin their reputation and send them to jail. Finn had gathered a loss of reputation in the cutthroat industry of space piracy (or just slightly illegal space transactions) was as good as losing your life.

“Here.” Quiggold grunted. He seemed to get heavier, leaned more on Finn with each step, and Finn felt stickiness drip down his side when he brushed against the pirate. The shift of his weight when he leaned towards his ship was as effective as dropping an anchor. Finn swung to port and cursed when his toes hit the ramp.

“Kriff!” He tripped and whirled when the Gabdorian’s weight bore down on him. Finn’s breath left him in a rush when the pirate hit his ribs and his next breath was heavy with the pirate’s scent. Blood, sweat, and scorch mingled on Finn’s palate. “Ugh.”

Quiggold pushed against Finn in his attempt to get upright and Finn felt his ribs creak. He’d never missed Stormtrooper armor as much as he did just then. “Ow! Hold…” Quiggold blinked heavily, “oh, no, don’t…” At least this time the pirate collapsed to the side, only partially on top of Finn. Finn stared at the sky as TIE fighters screamed past. “Kriff.”

Footsteps from inside the ship, heavy boots, treaded (likely) and worn by a man who walked like he was used to marching. Finn’s blaster was trapped under the bleeding bulk of the pirate, not like he’d have been in a good position to shoot anyway. He shoved at Quiggold in the hope that he could roll the man off before whoever was in that ship could-

“Thank Force.” Boots said, he rushed down the gangplank to grab at the arm not currently lying on top of Finn. Finn turned his head but the angle of the sun left Boots’ face in shadow. “The captain went out looking for…”

“He’s unconscious.” Finn grunted. “Blaster wound.”

The stranger nodded and shifted to get a better grip on the wounded man’s arm. “Help me get him in the ship.”

Boots was clearly used to, not to giving orders per se, but to being obeyed when he made helpful, pleasant suggestions. Finn grunted again and helped get Quiggold on his feet and then into the ship. Fin peered around the bulk of the pirate but still couldn’t see Boots’ face. Perhaps he was the medic the wounded man had mentioned. “There’s a cot over there.” 

Finn wasn’t looking forward to getting too far into the ship, just in case, but he spotted the cot near the door and gladly moved that way. Once the wounded pirate had been dropped (and he did drop) onto the cot Finn turned to the medic to make his excuses. He needed to get back to the fighting. Or, to the running after the fighting since it sounded more and more like it was moving further into the tree line. The last time Rey had been out in those trees with First Order troops Finn had ended up following her to a snowball of death. This time she had Luke Skywalker and a handful of Resistance troops on her side, as well as the incoming X-wings.

Given the noise of the dogfight overhead either the pirates were giving better than he had expected or Poe’s squadron had arrived.

“Blaster wound.” He told the distracted medic who was already on his knees examining it. From above he could make out the slight thinning in the back of the man’s otherwise thick black hair.

“Damn.” The medic peeled away Quiggold’s hand from his wound with a slick rip. It had partially crusted over and now blood dripped onto the beige cot. “And we’re out of bacta.”

Finn pulled open his bag and looked inside. He had three left, he was sure that Boots, whatever his name, would be happy with just one but the wound was large and blaster wounds could heal poorly. He pulled out two and offered them. The medic, who had grabbed a knife and sliced through the tunic, turned towards him. “Herrrrrrrrrrrrr….” Finn blinked.

Full on, he wondered how he hadn’t seen it before. Or, no, it was more that he hadn’t seen the man’s face.

The clones’ face.

“You’re a clone.”

The clone trooper took the bacta patches from his suddenly useless hand and Finn couldn’t help but stare. No, this man couldn’t… he really… 

“I just look like one.” The clone said with the worst sabacc face Finn had ever seen. Finn had a better sabacc face (Poe didn’t know it but his favorite seat when playing left him with his back to a mirror and it meant Finn could both watch his cards and his own face, no one had broken it to the commander that this was why he kept losing at cards) and he was a lousy liar. The clone didn’t even look like he was trying. “Maybe my grandmother…”

Finn shook his head. “Look, okay, we studied clone trooper tactics, I-”

Footsteps on the gangplank, heavy, treaded, multiple footsteps. The clone hastily applied bacta to Quiggold and Finn looked around for a better defensive position. Nothing. The walls of the freighter were stacked low with boxes and bags of merchandise but they were all different shapes and sizes, stacking them to form a barricade to hide behind would take time. While he had been grateful the cot was close to the entrance mere heartbeats ago now he was cursing his luck. 

The clone grabbed Quiggold’s blaster and stood at Finn’s side.

At the first sight of white the two of them fired. The angle and lighting from the ramp was poor but both men still had to dodge backward several steps when their fire was returned. The cot and it’s occupant were safe but they, and the merchandise, were not. A substance that looked to be the texture of sand but smelled like sugar poured from a blasted open box onto the floor.

“We’ve gotta take off!” Someone from the front of the ship shouted.

“The captain’s not back yet!” The medic, the clone, shouted. He sounded like he agreed with the pilot, however.

Finn stepped over the pool of sweet sand and peered towards the ramp.

There were Stormtroopers out there. If it was Finn’s squad he’d use a bomb next. If Finn could catch it, or kick it back, he might do more damage to the troopers than to the ship. 

Someone was laughing.

“FN-2187.”

“Kriff.” Finn muttered.

The helmets must have caught just enough of his face to identify him. 

“And the clone wars trooper.” Finn raised his eyebrows, the clone stiffened. “We’ve been looking for you.”

Oh, well, that wasn’t good. If the squad commander was any good he would have sized up just how unlikely boarding the ship would be (not impossible, but not worth the risk, unless Finn and the medic’s dead bodies were preferred over their live ones) and with two prizes almost in hand would send someone to disable the ship.

‘We need to lift off.’ Finn mouthed to the medic. The clone looked at Quiggold, then Finn, then the ramp. His face was tight with anxiety. 

“They will kill us.” Finn hissed. Kill us, grind us to bits and blast us into oblivion, some part of his mind said. “Or worse.” Definitely worse. Definitely, definitely worse.

If the First Order got their hands on a Republic clone trooper… the Clone Troopers were one of a kind. They’d been the first clone army in recent galactic history, and the best one as far as anyone could tell. The Emperor’s destruction of the Kaminoan cloning facilities early in his career was singularly damned by military analysts. ‘Imagine what he could have built’ Finn’s mid-level teacher had gushed ‘if his army had been of one mind.’ Analyzing the clonetrooper’s genetics and ransacking his mind would give the First Order an edge and please them to no end.

Plus, Finn was sure that they’d make a horrific example of _him_ and he wanted to live. He really wanted to live. 

“We’ve gotta go!” The trooper shouted towards the pilot.

“Captain back?” The pilot shouted.

An explosion under the ship, Finn grabbed for a handhold but missed and instead slipped on the sweet sand and stepped on the clone troopers foot. “Just GO!” 

Laughter from outside.

“I can’t!” The pilot shouted.

“Surrender now.” The squad leader said. No promises, no threats, just a simple order. Finn gritted his teeth.

Something in his stomach lightened, a tightness, a bad feeling, and he laughed. The trooper looked at him like he was bantha fodder and Finn grinned. “Wait for it.”

The sound of blaster fire a muffled shout of. “Is that a Jedi?!” The clone trooper’s eyes widened. Finn grinned as he listened to the distinctive sound of blaster fire being deflected by a lightsaber. He was really fond of that trick of Rey’s. Sure, he’d never seen it used in battle but she’d done it to show off often enough. 

The troopers outside decided that if they wanted their prize Finn and the clone had to be grabbed now. Which, well, Finn’s stomach might clench when he stepped over their downed bodies but… they fired first. Life or death. Life or worse than death, he reminded himself as he squeezed the trigger and a trooper took the shot to the arm. They fell out of sight, down the ramp, maybe they’d survive. Maybe the Resistance could support rehabilitating Stormtroopers, reform them, revolutionize them.

Maybe.

He stepped over the a trooper with black scorch over his heart and saw Rey at the bottom of the ramp. She grinned at him, sweat on her brow, her double yellow lightsaber aglow. “You’re okay!” She shouted.

The sound of fighting was distant now and when Finn ducked out of the ship he heard no screaming TIEs or anymore escaping pirates. The shipyard was two-third’s empty and some of it was taken up by crashed or broken vessels. Fires flickered sporadically among twisted metal and pained cries. X-wings swooped overhead (Poe doing a deliberate, showy roll) and headed over the water.

“ _You’re_ okay.” Finn returned the jubilance. 

He would have grabbed her for a hug but he liked his arms attached. She glanced at the lightsaber in her hands and turned it off with a twitch. “Who’s your friend?”

Finn glanced over his shoulder at the wide eyed clone trooper. “I didn’t catch his name…” This would be a good moment for the trooper to excuse himself, ignore them, run off to find the Crimson Corsair…

“Kix, general.” The trooper snapped a salute off and clicked his heels together. “I, sorry, you’re not,” he forced himself out of being ramrod straight, “force of habit.” The- Kix, muttered. 

Rey’s smile had become a frown. “I’ve got a few bad habits of my own.” She said anyway. Then she grabbed Finn’s elbow. “C’mon, Maz still needs to talk to us.”

Finn let himself be dragged a step before he wrapped his hand around Rey’s. She blinked at him with wide eyes and he shrugged. “Hold on.”

The trooper was still frozen at the top of the ramp and Finn had barely moved away but he jogged to get to Kix anyway. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper (‘paper’ C-3PO had scoffed when Finn had asked for some, ‘whose uses paper?’) he jotted down a series of numbers and forced it into the medic’s numb hands. “My personal encryption, com me if you’ ever need help.”

Then he jogged back down to Rey and took her arm.

He wouldn’t know until he talked to her, but he was pretty sure that Kix was at least part of the reason Maz had wanted to see them.

But then again, what did he know? It was just a feeling. And he was just a runaway Stormtrooper running into the only living clonetrooper just when the First Order had set their sights on him. It could just be coincidence. 

“The Force doesn’t work like that, my foot.” Finn muttered under his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if I screwed up Kix's personality. First time writing him and it takes me a while to pin down characterization. I WILL BINGE ON CLONE WARS AND IMPROVE I SWEAR.
> 
> Nien does in fact say 'they would have shot me next'. He also says 'why are the heroic ones so pretty and so foolish?' and 'I need a drink'. He follows it up with 'the Republic does not pay me enough for this'.
> 
> Everyone who plays sabacc with Dameron is sworn to secrecy. It's a secret pact. They're all in this together, after all. 
> 
> It started out as a 'can you BELIEVE Dameron' thing way back when Poe was with Rapier squadron. Everyone meant to tell him, eventually, but since they were only playing for favors or shifts no-one saw any harm. But one night, after a really good flight and a little bit of Corellian whisky, it transitioned to playing for clothes and Snap and Testor got the Full Dameron and now there is no going back. Poe can never know. He'd never let them live it down and thus EVERYONE IS PART OF THE CONSPIRACY.
> 
> Poe does, in fact, know. He put the mirror behind him on purpose. He continues to do this each time he has to move or re-arrange his room. He figures taking a few shifts or owing favors to his squadron is good for morale.
> 
> He also cannot back down because if Jessika or Snap find out he knows about the mirror they'll never let him hear the end of it.
> 
> They will all take this secret to their GRAVES.


	4. Flights of Fancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kix calls in a little help during the Crimson Corsair's raid of one of Dooku's top-secret bases. Then he reveals some secrets. Kix is really, really bad at keeping secrets.

“You said you could fly anything!” Finn shouted over the roar of the engines, the distant sounds of explosions, and BB-8’s expletive laden conversation with the ship’s navigational A.I.

Poe had recently started to regret that claim. At the time, semi (okay, extremely) delirious and happy to grasp at any chance of survival, Poe would have claimed to be able to fly a brezak as long as it had gotten him off the Finalizer. How was he supposed to know the Universe would get back at him? It wasn’t even a bold claim. Put him in any of the Republic certified vehicles and he could fly it. X-wings were a cinch. A-wings? In the bag. Light cruisers, corvettes, he’d even done his fair share of hauling freighters and transport ships. He could fly just about any ship that the Republic had put on the assembly line in his life span and anything the Rebel Alliance had been forced to cope with before.

And he’d done well enough with that TIE fighters! How the hell was he supposed to know that the First Order liked to, literally, lock their ships down?! The Republic used grav-locks to keep shipboard fighters from sliding around.

“Maybe I exaggerated.” Poe grumbled, loud enough Finn should be able to hear him. Then, giving up subtlety, he shouted over his shoulder. “Maybe I lied!”

After all, it wasn’t like he could literally fly anything and everything.

Case in point, Count Dooku’s secondary pleasure craft. 

Pleasure craft or escape craft? Poe wasn’t sure. It was fancy enough to be one but definitely should be fast enough to be the other.

BB-8 whistled and whirred, at him this time instead of the nav AI and Poe rolled his eyes.

“Thanks for the backup.” He grumbled, even though he knew that Finn didn’t understand binary (yet). Rey’s laughter was weak and broken by a drawn out grown.

“Lemme up,” she slurred and tried to rise despite Kix’s hands holding her down, “lemme, I can figure it out.” 

Poe snorted. Not, not that he doubted she could (she probably could) but because the luxury schooner was meant to be flown with one passenger and a designated pilot droid. That was how the Separatists had played it, droids could be trusted more than people and could be thrown away easier too. The pilot droid had either never made it into the ship or had been torn out years ago. 

“You’ve been poisoned.” Kix said, calm, utterly calm, and the man had nerves of dura-steel and balls of carbonite. “You’re lucky to be alive. What you have to do is meditate.”

Poe really needed to drag the story of how Finn and Kix had met out of Finn. All he’d gotten was a quick ‘we met on Takodana’ before he was dragged off on what was meant to be an equally quick adventure. Meet some new people (who he hadn’t known were pirates), go to exciting locales (the secret hide-out of a long dead Sith), relax (HA!) and have fun (or, you know, be chased by battle droids and nearly poisoned by a vengeful security system). 

“You need to keep your heart rate down,” Kix continued, Poe cut him off with a shout when the navigation AI finally gave in and the console lit up like a Life Day tree, “which means no flying,” Poe flipped switches that looked right, punched buttons marked with easy to recognize symbols, “no arguing,” Finn held on tight to the overhead straps, “and no excitement!”

The ship lifted off and none too soon, the battle droids had broken through their makeshift barricade of whatever scrap had been left in the hanger. They streamed in uncoordinated lines into the hanger, guns drawn but not firing.

“Should we blast them?” Finn inquired, he peered out the side of the ships view port and watched the loitering droids curiously. “They’re not doing much.”

Kix shook his head. “On their own battle droids are their own worst enemy. No orders and they bicker until their batteries die. They’re probably programmed not to fire on this ship too.” 

“Well.” Poe flew the ship serenely out of the hanger, now that the AI was behaving she moved like a dream. A nice, sweet dream, the kind Poe hadn’t had since he was a child. “That’s good news for us.”

The Crimson Corsair’s ship floated overhead, battle-scarred and asteroid pocked it did not make for an appealing sight. Poe was sure that many a cruiser or freighter had clenched their jaws when they saw it appear on their scanners. Odd to think the pirates had been their companions for this jaunt. They’d still managed to get out ahead, of course, but they’d waited around.

Probably for Kix. After all, never abandon a member of your crew was a pirate motto, wasn’t it?

BB-8 whistled to get Poe’s attention and he sighed. “Yeah, patch them through BB.” 

“You alive, Kix?” The voice of the gruff Gabraldin first mate rumbled through the ship’s com systems. Poe flipped a few more appropriate looking switches and glanced over his shoulders at Kix. The other man shrugged his tightly muscled shoulders and inched far enough away from Rey to be picked up by the microphones. 

“Still kicking, sir,” the sir was reflexive and, Poe could tell from the flush on Kix’s dark cheeks, unintentional. “Uh, the Jedi-”

“Not a Jedi yet.” Rey growled, like it personally irked her. Poe turned to look over his shoulder at her, it brought him uncomfortably close to Kix’s face (close enough he could make out the edges of the man’s tattoo where it disappeared under his hair) and noted that despite the sweat on her brow she was already looking better. Whatever miracle Kix had whipped up from the meager supplies of his medkit and Finn’s must be doing her good. Or perhaps it was the meditation.

“Right,” Kix muttered under his breath, a quite grumble that Poe was likely the only one to hear, “of course not.” He sighed, loudly. “You saw Rey drop when she opened that box, apparently it was booby-trapped with poison. I’m going to fly with them and we can rendezvous at…” The other man glanced at Poe and mouthed ‘Takodana’ questioningly. Poe nodded. It was where they’d met, after all, and where they had left the Millennium Falcon. He had to admit, he’d seen more of Maz’s castle recently than he thought he ever would. Rey and Finn made friends in the strangest of places. “Takodana.”

Quiggold grunted. “They letting you keep the ship?”

Poe’s laughter came out with a snort. “While the Resistance needs ships this thing,” he rapped a spare bit of panel with his knuckles, “is hardly going to win a fight with a TIE.”

Though it might be able to outpace them. Still, the ‘booty’ that Rey had wanted to find hadn’t been ship related and Poe was sure the General would be forgiving if it bolstered their relations with the pirates. 

“Sounds good to me.” Quiggold said shortly. “See you there, kid.”

Then the ship hovering above punched into hyperspace. 

Kix let out a sigh and his shoulders, for a brief second, relaxed. Then he turned around and headed back to Rey, the tension returning quickly.

“Alright, BB-8, let’s plug in the coordinates and get out of here.” While the little, nameless dwarf planet Dooku had set up a secret base on was adorable from a distance Poe hardly wanted to stick around. He’d be sure to tell the General when he got back, and Snap as well. Mr. Bones was always in need of new parts.

‘Affirmative.’ BB-8 beeped at him and began another argument with the navigation AI over their course. From what Poe could understand, while the AI had given in to unauthorized passengers, it didn’t want to plot a course that would land them near any heavily patrolled Republic routes. BB-8 was trying to explain that the Clone War was over and the AI didn’t have to worry. Coordinates flashed in a read-out in front of Poe and he okayed them with a push of a button. The stars streaked around their ship as they pushed into hyperspace.

Poe turned round in his seat. Hyperspace wasn’t something you strictly needed a pilot for. “How’re you feeling?” He asked Rey from across Finn’s chest. 

The ship was small, large for one passenger and a pilot but for three passengers, a pilot and a droid it was a tight fit. Especially given the crate full of things Rey had picked up from around Dooku’s castle. She was using it as a footrest now, which meant that Kix had to either stand on one side or straddle her legs to check her over. 

“Well, I’m feeling fine.” Finn said when Rey just grumbled and flapped her hands. “I didn’t touch anything giving off a ‘don’t touch me’ vibe.”

Rey’s grumbling was now accompanied with a slit eyed glare. “How were you not curious about a box that radiated ‘don’t touch me?’ It could have had so much cool stuff in it!” She was less slurred now as well.

Poe watched the back and forth with an amused expression.

“It didn’t, though, instead it had poison and,” he motioned at the last object in Rey’s box of scavenged items, a lightsaber with a curved hilt covered in fine metal work, “that.”

“A lightsaber isn’t anything to sniff at.” Rey retorted. “Skywalker’s always,” Kix’s head hit the ceiling as he reared back, “uh.”

He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, his expression several different shades of worried and apologetic. “Sorry, did you just say Skywalker?” 

Finn glanced at Poe, Poe shrugged. It wasn’t exactly a galactic secret that Luke Skywalker had joined the good fight against the First Order. It would have been difficult to keep it a secret once Skywalker made it to the Resistance’s new base and, of course, there was the matter of PR. Peezy was a big fan of press releases and Luke Skywalker was big news. Poe was pretty sure that the General had posed with a picture with her brother.

“Luke Skywalker.” Finn said carefully. “He helped defeat the Empire?” 

Kix nodded hurriedly. “Yeah, I just…” he rubbed the back of his head, “I don’t hear a lot of talk about the civil war. Not a hot button issue around pirate. And I used to know a Skywalker.”

He shrugged, awkward. Poe wondered what they were meant to take away from that, or if they were just meant to be distracted. Skywalker was a pretty common outer-rim name and as an adopted surname it had surged into popularity at the end of the civil war. For a few years, anyway. Now the most often Poe heard ‘Skywalker’ was the Skywalker Swoop. 

Rey opened her eyes wide enough that Poe could see her blown pupils. “It wasn’t Anakin Skywalker, was it?”

The medic laughed awkwardly and shook his head, too fast, whatever he was about to say... “It’s probably just, uh, a common name.” Then he laughed again and glanced desperately at Finn.

And that’s when it clicked for Poe. The name (or, not name, since Kix had introduced himself with ‘call me Kix’ not ‘my name is Kix’ which was something Finn did sometimes), the dated references (so many), the knowledge of Clone Wars era technology and encryptions, the fact that Poe could swear the semi-visible tattoo under Kix’s thinning hair read ‘the only good droid is a dead droid’. “Kriffing stars!” 

Finn’s hand clamped over Poe’s mouth hard and fast. Poe stared with wide eyes at him (oh, he so obviously knew, it was all in the eyes) then darted a glance at Rey (she still looked confused, also, still recovering from poison) then Kix (who looked decidedly resigned). “He’s a clone!” Poe shouted into Finn’s palm. It came out garbled and muffled and undecipherable.

Finn grinned. “Sorry, I can’t hear you.”

With narrowed eyes Poe resorted to the one tried and true tactic for friends covering your face with their hands. He licked Finn’s palm.

Finn yanked his hand away with a grimace. “Ew.”

Rey snickered.

Kix rolled his eyes. “My name,” a stress on the word, stress like Finn stressed it sometimes, “is Kix.” He took a breath, met Poe’s gaze. Poe felt instantly uncomfortable. He had put Kix in a terrible position, hadn’t he? He could see it in the man’s eyes. “And I used to be a trooper in the Grand Army of the Republic.” He took a quick, steadying breath. “And yes. I am a clone.”

Their outing had never been a happy one. Even from the beginning everything had carried a hint of urgency, a shadow of fear or nervousness, the whisper of a secret. In the confines of the shuttle, Kix’s revelation was stifling. Poe didn’t know what to say to the man. ‘Sorry?’ He could apologize, he supposed. But why was Kix’s clone status a secret? If anyone, if… well, did his shipmates know? Poe thought it over and thought it over fast. They might. There were a number of ways a person (or clone, were clones people, OF COURSE THEY WERE) could be preserved for years.

Carbonite instantly sprung to mind.

“That’s…” Poe cleared his throat. So, Kix was a clone but… what good did it do him? Clearly none. And he could see why Kix wanted to keep it secret now that he thought about it. Too many people would want to dissect him, the First Order was probably right at the front of the line and wouldn’t even wait for him to die. “Nice to know.”

He glanced at Finn (who glared at him, damn) and then Rey who still looked shaky. She didn’t seem to care. She just shrugged when she met his gaze.

Did she even know why Kix being a clone mattered? Poe glanced at BB-8.

His little friend beeped excitedly, surprised, Poe laughed. “Yeah, buddy, I bet R2 would love to meet him.”

Kix made a noise, not quite a stifled squawk but… but close. Glancing over his shoulder Poe raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yeah, R2 units are still around. They’re tough little droids.”

BB-8 let Poe know what he thought of _that_ statement with a roll over Poe’s toes. Ow.

The clone medic clearly did not appreciate having his attention split but, despite the fact he moved towards Rey to check her heartrate and pupils, he glanced back at Poe and BB-8. “I’d have thought R2 units would be phased out by now. I’ve seen them around but not doing astromech work.”

Rey nodded her head slowly. “I’ve worked with R2 units before,” she spoke as slowly as she had nodded, “they’re good droids. Not terribly imaginative but…”

Kix laughed quietly, cutting Rey off. “Sorry. Just.” He waved at BB-8, then at Rey. “General Skywalker, Anakin, the Jedi,” and clearly he was grateful to be able to talk about his past now, it all came out in a rush of descriptors just in case they didn’t know what he was talking about, “he had this R2 unit that used to fly all his missions with him. Damn droid was practically his best friend. R2, uh, R2-D2 was I think the name…”

Poe suddenly couldn’t breathe.

“He was trouble with a capitol T.” Kix fixed up another pen full of antidote and pressed it against Rey’s wrist. Then he looked up and caught them all ( _all_ of them) staring at him. “What?”

“It…” Finn glanced at Poe, then at Rey. His eyes were wide. “Droids sometimes get the same call numbers, right?”

Rey shook her head slowly. “Not that I know of.”

Poe, more aware of the history of R2-D2 in terms of the Rebel Alliance than the rest pinched the bridge of his nose. “If R2-D2 belonged to Anakin Skywalker there are a lot of things that… that get really weird.” How the hell would a droid that once belonged to Darth Vader end up on the same ship as an Imperial Senator slash agent of the Rebellion Alliance? Not only end up there but be loyal to the Alliance. Not only be loyal to the Alliance, and Darth Vader’s hidden daughter, but end up in the hands of Darth Vader’s other hidden child.

He had a headache.

“R2-D2’s still around?” Kix sounded as surprised as they were. “Well, I hope someone’s wiped his memory by now. Skywalker never…”

Poe slowly, slowly, shook his head. He was still pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Not since before the Empire fell.” He intoned, slowly. It made sense why R2 went into sleep mode for years looking for that map to Luke. The droid had more data than most central computer cores to shift through. Decades of knowledge. Decades of secrets.

Rey laughed, suddenly, unexpectedly, and when she blinked this time her pupils appeared normal and her gaze was clear. Either that last shot of miracle cure had finally kicked the poison out of her body or laughter truly was one of the galaxy’s greatest healers. “Force, Kix, are you sure we have to drop you off at Takodana? I’d love for you to meet Luke.” Her smile had an edge to it that had Poe questioning whether she was part Karkarodon. 

It was Finn’s turn to look incredulous. “Why do you want him to meet Skywalker?”

Rey’s grin widened. “He knows something about my parents. And now I know something about _his_.”

“…” Kix held up both hands to quiet Rey and Finn before they could start to bicker. Poe wondered if he could get the trooper to teach him the trick of it, the two of them never quieted down when _he_ held up his hands. Kriff, Rey and Finn would talk over the General if given half the chance (and if Finn wasn’t constantly worried he’d be thrown out the nearest airlock the minute he stepped out of line). “Wait,” he looked at Rey, “Luke Skywalker.” He looked at her meaningfully, she nodded. “His parents…” he paused, “his father is Anakin Skywalker?”

Rey nodded again.

The medic let out a gut deep whoosh of breath. “I KNEW that sharing a droid was a couple thing! No one believed me!”

Poe hit his head on the ceiling he stood up so fast. “Ow, kriff, shit, hold on.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, upsetting it more than usual. “You have an idea who the mother was?”

Kix nodded.

Poe grinned. “Screw Skywalker, I’m taking you to the General.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kix doesn't actually make it to Leia as they have to meet up with his crew and Kix runs away. He's still figuring out his life!
> 
> Poe tells Leia anyway, she calls R2-D2 to her office and they have an interesting talk. It mostly involves Leia yelling at him. R2 pretends to go to sleep. He's an old droid. Don't yell at him.
> 
> CAN YOU BELIEVE R2-D2 HASN'T HAD HIS MEMORY WIPED SINCE BEFORE THE FUCKING CLONE WARS?!
> 
> Also, laughter and the Force are the best medicine.


	5. The Peace the Evening Brings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yavin is a very peaceful, relaxing place. A good place to lie back and think about family, friends, and the Force.

Rey rocked in a hammock, handmade by Kes Dameron from native Yavinese fibers, hung on the bough of a tree that sang with the force, lulled by a cool evening breeze. Now and again the bough gave a creak, barely discernable over the croaking of tree frogs and the singing chirp of insects on the hunt for love. All the sounds melded together, the creaking, the croaking, the chirps and buzzes, the whistle of the wind and rustle of leaves, meshing with the song of the Force. With her eyes open, the tree looked like a tree, with her eyes closed she saw the glow of its power stretch outward, connected to the ground, the air, to the water that seemed to be everywhere on Yavin. Insects crawled on it, through it, the ghost of bird nests, eggs, parents, fluttered on silent wings through the darkness.

When Rey breathed she expelled... well, something, something that the tree took into itself. It expelled gas, air, back out and Rey breathed that in and… it was a cycle. 

This tree had helped her understand the force more than hours of meditation practice with Luke ever had.

Not that Luke Skywalker (‘call me Luke, do not call me Master’) wasn’t a good teacher! Rey didn’t like to consider herself a bad student either, the fault lay… elsewhere. She wouldn’t have made a very good classic Jedi.

Luke was always telling her that she needed to find her own way, her own style, and she did that unconsciously. It was only when she tried to fit what she thought the mold was that problems happened.

Like, using the Force. She was good at it, unconsciously. The Force had guided her for most of her life, saved her when she fell, had led her to choice plunder, but only when she wasn’t looking for it. She had managed to reach out and grab the lightsaber from Kylo Ren with a skill she hadn’t realized she had. She had reached for it and hoped. Using the Force was both an annoyingly precise maneuver and an annoyingly imprecise one. One must both be a part of the universe and apart from it. Rey had to relax and allow the Force to fill her up and flow through herself and also focus her mind so that she could manipulate it.

She was pretty sure that Luke didn’t mean to give her contradictory information. He apologized about it when he noticed.

But being a Jedi, or any Force User, seemed to be about balance more than anything else. If she could be both things, both instrument and musician, then she was kickass. 

But it seemed a state she could only reach when her life, or the lives of those she loved, were in danger.

Luke had commented on that as well, that danger was one of the ways he had learned how to reach the Force and the power inside of himself as well. But danger could not always be relied on and anger and fear (which danger could induce) were the wrong path to take. 

She breathed, and the tree breathed, and the planet breathed, and the Force breathed, and the Galaxy breathed and…

And someone laughed.

Rey blinked away open her eyes and blinked again when her light was blocked by two shadows. Finn and Poe hovered above her. In between his fingers Finn held a small holorecorder, the kind used for personal keepsakes.

“Sorry.” He apologized when he noted her gaze and slid just a smidgen out of her reach. Not that she would have grabbed for him, not on the hammock, eating dirt and grass in front of her… friends wasn’t really something Rey wanted to do. “But you look do relaxed. You never look relaxed.”

She did. Or, no, sometimes she felt relaxed but since those times generally came when she was hanging upside down inside the bowels of an engine that she was hurrying to fix while someone screamed at her about incoming fire… well, she probably didn’t look relaxed at that point. She felt it, though. “You should send it to Skywalker.” She paused, licked her lips and closed her eyes. The burst of red was back, a backlight to the blue glow of the tree, a firework in the sky that flickered between an explosion and a hovering moon. “Proof I can meditate.”

“I’m not so sure you should count napping as meditating.” Finn teased. He settled against the trunk of the tree. Rey could see him in the Force as well, a bright white that centered round his heart. She could taste his optimism on her tongue, which was a weird statement but was true. It tasted like… like the crunchy fried sweet snacks Poe had brought them both from Corellia. Finn reached out and gave her hammock a slight push, his fingers brushed the bare skin of her ankles and she could feel more than his optimism. His joy, his fear, his love. It sang, an echo of the Force.

“I’m communing with the Force.” She stated. “I’m the Jedi. I get to decide what that means.”

Sort of a Jedi, anyway.

Poe settled against the tree with a laugh. Every step he took, every move me made, his presence sang out ‘home’ and the planet sang back. It was odd to know someone was welcomed by a _planet_ but Rey supposed that was just the kind of person Poe was. Poe was welcomed almost anywhere. “You’re always saying you’re not a Jedi yet, are you ready to embra-”

“Being almost a Jedi still means I’m more of a Jedi than you two.” She cut him off.

She hated the phrase ‘embrace your destiny’. It made it seem like her free will didn’t matter, that she was fated to fight the Dark Side. It also placed a lot of responsibility on her, a lot of emphasis on her choices. Balance, again, was the key.

Balance seemed to always be the key.

She sighed. Poe and Finn fell relatively quiet, their breathing slow, she squinted her eyes open and watched the two of them with their heads tipped back, their eyes on the stars.

She slipped out of the hammock… no, okay, she wrestled her way out of the hammock and landed on a knee and her hands. “Ow.” She muttered at the disturbed grass, the dirt that was now on her palm. She scrubbed it on Poe’s knee when he laughed at her and squeezed her way in between the two of them. “Dinner ready?”

Finn shook his head. “Mr. Dameron-”

“He’s asked you to call him Kes.” Poe interrupted with a groan.

“He also asked me to call him dad.” Finn retorted sharply. He shook his head and Rey had to agree. Kes Dameron was way less formal an adult than she was used to dealing with. “So, no. Anyway, he says we have an hour before it’s ready.” He paused and oh, there was something else.

Finn took a deep breath.

“Our results came in. C-3P0 had them routed securely to BB-8.” 

That had her sitting up and shoving Poe out of the way as she turned to give Finn her full attention. The other pilot fell backwards onto a root with a shout. She ignored it. He complained too much. “They did? Did you.” She bit her bottom lip. “Did you look?”

Finn nodded, then shook his head. “I, at mine, yeah, but I didn’t open your data packet. BB-8’ll display it for you when you want.” 

She looked into his eyes, his earnest, deep brown eyes, and nodded. “Alright, yeah.” She pushed back to sit against the tree and realized that Dameron’s damn legs were in the way. “Hey.”

“You pushed me over.” Poe responded smugly. He had made himself comfortable against a large root (although the one that looked like it went right under his back had to be bothering him. “You have to suffer the consequences.” 

She poked at his legs again and when she turned to look at Finn she appreciated the glare (alright, the small displeased frown) he was giving Poe. So, instead of reclaiming her spot, she climbed on top of Poe’s legs to sit. They weren’t terribly comfortable, but his boots at least gave her a brace for her elbow when she turned to look at Finn. “Hey!” Poe complained.

“So, what did your results say?” She ignored Poe wholeheartedly.

Seriously, he complained too much, this was his own fault. 

“I’m 50% Alderaanian.” Finn hooked a thumb at his chest. His smile was proud, at least, until it sagged at the edges. “I mean, 50% of my genetics fall within common Alderaanian genetic structures.” He licked his lips. “And my grandmother was logged on the database!” 

The Imperial Genetic Database had been, as the name stated, an Imperial project. It had started out as the eugenics research and moved onto a way to log officers, troopers, and captured rebels. While it hadn’t taken off in the populace it had been widely used among the Empire’s troops. After the Empire fell the database became a handy way of helping people connect with lost or estranged family members. It was one of the many databases that had felt the torch of Imperial fervor and had data destroyed when the Empire fell but, if there was one thing that had worked against the Empire’s efforts to cripple the new Republic, it was their love of redundancies. Enough data had survived that the new Republic, once on its feet, had turned a tool of the Empire into a tool for them.

“You didn’t mention that.” Poe said, he had sat up now but, since Rey was sitting on them, had not moved his legs. “Who was she?”

Finn’s faded smile wilted even further. “She was an Imperial comms officers that deserted her post and was sentenced to death upon her recovery seven years later.” He took a deep breath and let it out, sadness for a woman who he had never known and who had been dead for years filled him to the brim. 

“Huh, well.” Rey punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Maybe you’ve got more family out there.”

Finn ducked his head and smiled. Rey couldn’t take her eyes off him when he smiled. It was… it wasn’t sunshine and daisies, for one thing Rey had never seen a daisies and in her mind the sun would always burn. No, Finn’s smiles were like… were like fresh soup. Filling, delicious, and emanating warmth. She wanted to cup his cheeks and… Rey flushed and shifted so she was off Poe’s legs and could use him as a distraction.

Poe was looking at Finn.

If Finn was soup then Poe was… well, his smiles weren’t soup. They were something sharper, spicier, and despite the fact that he wanted to cup Finn’s cheeks and drink him down just as much as Rey did he held himself apart. Apart from Finn and apart from Rey, kept them at arm’s length despite wanting more. Rey wondered, sometimes, why he did that.

But it wasn’t like she was rushing right into Finn’s arms so, so it’s not like she didn’t totally understand.

“Well, maybe my family will be on there too.” She could hope, after all. She sighed and leaned back against the tree. Poe pulled himself up to settle in at her side and they all relaxed together. Peace, tranquility, love spread through them and she reached out. Finn was already reaching for her hand, Poe she had to grasp for. Connected, they listened to the clicks and chirps of faraway insects, the whirr-thrumm-hum of a ship lifting in the distance. 

“If they’re not,” Poe spoke carefully, “you know that…”

She did.

“You’re my family.” She said simply. “You two,” she squeezed their hands, she had grown to like holding hands, it was one of the few ways of offering physical affection she could stand for long, “Luke, the General,” she paused to think about it, “you’re my family.”

Maz had said it, hadn’t she? That the belonging Rey looked for was ahead of her. Here, she thought, she had found it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hammocks are very relaxing things.
> 
> First drafts of this chapter featured the sexual chorus of bugs trying to get it on melding with the song of the Force melding with Poe Dameron singing love songs to Rey and Finn.


	6. Remembrance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn attends Remembrance Day on New Alderaan.

Remembrance Day was observed on many planets in the new Republic. Despite the Empire’s compulsion to eradicate anyone who they felt were tied to the Rebel Alliance pockets of Alderaanian population had survived throughout the galaxy. Gatherings happened everywhere, small ones in homes sheltered from the wind, larger ones in rented arenas. The largest gathering for Remembrance Day was on New Alderaan, a planet that had been started by the refugees of a destroyed world and had gathered, slowly, any remnant of its destroyed culture. 

Finn held his breath when the General climbed onto the stage.

The crowd around him roared their approval, shouts of her name, ‘Princess’ and ‘Leia’ melded with ‘General’ and cries of ‘Organa’, Finn covered his ears but he smiled wide, helplessly. Ebullience, a golden, flying feeling, took him from all around and filled him to the brim. A wave of motion surged through the crowd, pushing everyone closer to each other, closer to the line of security detail at the edge of the stage.

Poe was in there somewhere. If Finn scanned the line he might be able to spot Poe’s face, forehead crinkled and eyebrows drawn together as he attempted to keep everyone from climbing the stage. He would be wearing the ugly green uniform of the Resistance and unless Finn focused, he would blend into the crowd.

Rey stood beside Luke Skywalker, three steps behind the General, both of them dressed in white. She looked like an angel. Finn was sure that she couldn’t make him out, not in a crowd that size, not from the distance between them, but Rey looked towards him (at him) and smiled.

Finn’s helpless smile could only grow wider.

The General was dressed in black, a conservatively cut outfit that Finn had been told was traditional Alderaanian mourning wear. It came with a dark grey cape that wrapped round the General’s shoulders and hung down her back. She looked austere but, even from a distance, it would be hard to mistake her for cold.

The screen behind the stage magnified the General’s face, large enough she could be seen by those in back. When she spoke, she was amplified as well.

“Hello.” She said. It caused a brief laugh from those in front. She smiled.

“We all know why we are here.”

Finn nodded, a mirror of the man next to him, the woman three people in front, the child held in his father’s arms halfway across the field. They all knew.

“We are here to mourn,” the General had written the speech herself and rehearsed it privately. She had been invited to speak at Remembrance day every year since the holiday (Finn really felt that was the worst word for it) had been established. She always said no.

Except this year.

“Not only for those lost on Alderaan, all those years ago.” The crowd was hushed. “But for those of the Hosnian system…”

The crowd grew restless as the First Order’s crimes were brought up. The death of the Hosnian system was not as long ago as Alderaan’s, it was an open wound in comparison to the Alderaanian’s scar. Finn watched as some in the crowd turned away while others brought out handkerchiefs to stifle tears. Some people here would have lost family, or friends, both times. Others still believed that fighting the First Order was wrong, that there was a diplomatic solution to their problems. 

Some in the crowd would be First Order sympathizers.

“But we are not only here to mourn them.” This was the part of the speech Finn had been worried about. Part of the speech the General had been worried about too. She had brought him to her office one night and asked if he would give her his opinion. “We also mourn the lives of the men and women who served on the Death Star,” shocked silence, “and Starkiller base-”

The crowd screamed. This could very quickly turn into a riot.

Hence security, hence Luke and Rey, hence Finn and other loyal Resistance members scattered throughout the crowd. 

The amplification meant that even over the shouts Leia’s words would be heard. “Who served a flawed system ruled by cruel men. I don’t ask that you forgive them.” the crowd quieted, slightly, and Finn glanced around at angry faces, crumpled faces, men and women with stiffened lips and reddened eyes. He felt… something, in him, looking at them. “I have never asked that you forgive them.”

The rest of the speech went off without a hitch. With definitely less screaming. When Leia left the stage it was to polite applause, not scattered, but brief, and the man who hurried on stage next (one of the many Alderaanian-alien mixes on New Alderaan) was visibly nervous.

Finn did his best to push his way through the crowd without drawing attention to himself. There were more speeches to be made, after all, from political leaders, from holonet stars, there were even bands preforming later. Finn wasn’t here for the music or the speeches however. He stumbled out of the crowd and was caught by his arm before he could fall. 

“Not staying for…” Poe had to glance at the card held in his hand, “you know what? I can’t pronounce this.”

Rey peeked over his shoulder, a white sunrise, and three sharp syllables rolled off her tongue.

“Your skill with languages never ceases to amaze me.” Finn enthused, admiringly.

Rey grinned at him. “It’s a gift.” Then she reached past Poe for Finn’s hand and tugged him around their green suited friend. “C’mon, there’s more to see than speeches.”

“I know…” Finn grabbed Poe before he could be dragged off on his own. “Wait,” he looked at Poe but didn’t let go, “aren’t you supposed to be on security?”

Poe let himself be dragged. Really, Rey’s grip and strength was admirable, even if they weren’t pulling against it. “Only for the General.”

“And she’s done.” Rey said, she pulled them through checkpoints and towards the tents, merchants who would make money off any public gathering. “So,” she dropped Finn’s hand but, when Finn snatcher hers up again, didn’t protest, “let’s explore.”

Finn could find no fault in that plan.

Which, given that Rey’s plans were generally simple and rock-solid, wasn’t surprising.

He grinned at his friends. “Let’s.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE IS THE +1. ALDERAAN DID NOT SURVIVE THE EMPIRE.
> 
> Except it kind of did. I mean, we see that in the Leia comics. Leia gathers up all those refugees and they all go off to find a new home. Also, while I think that Leia's not really a forgive & forget person BUT she also realizes why people built and served on the Death Star and Starkiller base and there have been more than one story where someone in the Rebellion is tied to people in the Empire emotionally or familiarly.
> 
> Mourn the loss of life for what it is, but you don't need to forgive their crimes.
> 
> BTW Finn is super in love. He thinks Rey is all the good things in the universe.


End file.
